Jose Fernandez, the Miami Marlins’ prized young pitcher, was part of his team’s record-setting, 20-inning 2-1 victory over the New York Mets Saturday. Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
Saturday was one of those days in Major League baseball that was definitely the sum of its parts. There was no one game that produced massive nationwide buzz, but there were several games that added together were enough to get a fan’s attention.
Just for starters the Miami Marlins and the New York Mets played 20 innings. But on the same day the Toronto Blue Jays and the Texas Rangers played 18. Now how often do two teams play an 18-inning game and not have it be the longest game of the day? A fan might even think that had never happened before. But sure enough, it wasn’t even that long ago that it did occur. On August 15, 2006, there were two games that lasted at least 18 innings.
The Marlins-Mets game, which lasted 6 hours, 25 minutes, was a pitcher’s duel. Miami won 2-1, though of course the starting pitchers had been gone from the mound so long that they might have been in another time zone on vacation by the time the game actually ended. Young Mets ace Matt Harvey went seven innings with one earned run allowed. Young Marlins prospect Jose Fernandez went six innings with one run allowed. This matched the longest game played in Marlins history.
Blue Jays-Rangers lasted 5 1/2 hours and Toronto won, 4-3. Interestingly, this also equaled the longest game in team history for both teams.
The two lengthy contests represented pretty good pitching up and down the line spread amongst many relievers. But several other pitchers for other teams had good days that on other occasions would have grabbed bigger headlines. Yankee southpaw Andy Pettitte notched his 250th career win five days after a mediocre return from the disabled list and Boston’s Clay Buchholz moved to 9-0 by beating the Angels.
Batters just weren’t getting anything good to hit from very selfish, stingy pitchers on Saturday. Cincinnati’s Mat Latos moved to 6-0 with a 4-2 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals. And John Danks, who has been battling back from injury and rehab,  limited Oakland to three hits and one run in eight innings as he captured his first win in more than a year. In another career milestone, Kansas City’s Ervin Santana won his 100th game, 7-2, over the Astros.
It was just a pitcher’s kind of day all around with Jeremy Hellickson pitching six innings of shutout ball as Tampa Bay beat the Orioles, 8-0, and A.J. Burnett gave up just two runs in 8 1/3 innings in a 6-2 Pirates win over the Cubs.
And while it is not easy to define exactly what this means, something that points to the timelessness of baseball and things going around and coming around, this weekend the Minnesota Twins are competing in their first games in Washington, D.C. in 42 years against the Washington Nationals. Once upon a time, for the youngsters in the audience, the Twins were the Washington Senators.